indonesia-news Agency

Coordinates: 6°10′52″S 106°49′26″E  /  6.181°S 106.824°E  / -6.181; 106.824 Antara is an Indonesian news agency organized as a statutory corporation.a It is the country's national news agency, supplying news reports to the many domestic media organization. It is the only organization authorized to distribute news material created by foreign news agencies. The news agency was founded in 1937, when the country was still a colony in the Dutch Empire, by independence activists dissatisfied with the lack of local coverage by the Dutch-owned Aneta news agency. Antara's operation was absorbed into the Dōmei Tsushin news network following invasion by the Japanese in 1942. Its staff played a key role in the broadcast of Indonesia's proclamation of independence and assumed control of the Dōmei facilities in the region at the end of the war. The agency remained under private management until it was placed under the control of the presidency in the 1960s when the government shif...

Early years edit Antara was established on 13 December 1937 in Batavia (later Jakarta), the colonial capital of the Dutch East Indies. Prior to its establishment, Dominique Willem Berretty had founded Aneta, the Indies' first news agency. A number of Dutch and indigenous firms were also in existence but did not achieve similar stature. As a Dutch agency, however, Aneta rarely included local news in its coverage. This led to dissatisfaction among independence activists Soemanang Soerjowinoto and Albert Manoempak Sipahoetar, who eventually decided to form a separate news agency. Soemanang had been working at the Tjaja Timoer newspaper, while Sipahoetar was an employee for a Dutch advertisement agency. The latter was also an acquaintance of Adam Malik, who had left Medan after Dutch authorities attempted to imprison him for political activism. The three met at Soemanang's residence with author Armijn Pane to discuss the establishment of the news agency. Soemanang named the agency...

Antara is a state-owned enterprise ( Badan Usaha Milik Negara ) under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises. It was previously under direct presidential authority since 1962 and within the administrative structure of the State Secretariat, which provided for its subsidies, since 1977. The news agency was also responsible to Ministry of Information which coordinated press activities. David Hill of Murdoch University points out that under the Suharto government Antara's Supervisory Council at one point included the deputy chief of the State Intelligence Coordinating Agency, indicating military interest in regulating the press. Antara's status as a government entity had come into question as restrictions on press activity were lifted. Article 9 of the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 40 of 1999 stipulates that news organizations must operate as a "legal entity", which directly contradicted Antara's status as an institute according to former executive editor A. ...

Antara's legacy as a news organization is the documentation of Indonesia's decolonization process and formative years as a nation. Antara became an alternative news source for the fledgling Indonesian press which could not afford the services of its rival Aneta, and nationalist interpretations in its reporting contrasted that of the Dutch news agency. Despite these advances, political scientist Oey Hong Lee observed that the overall impact of Antara's reporting remained limited while Aneta continued to exist, "reflecting on the weakness of the nationalist press" and with "Antara's predominantly home-based news coverage finding its way only into more nationalist minded newspapers and progressive Chinese press organs". Hill argues that journalists and guerrilla soldiers were equally important in winning the Indonesian National Revolution. Antara and nationalist newspapers, which were largely unrestricted under the postwar transitional Allied administra...